Are these salaries reasonable? The data for Jr. Eng. suggest that only 12% of Jr. Engs. make less than $100K/yr.
SV as a whole has juniors pinned ~ the 103 mark.
Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
161–170 of 455 posts
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quality food is more expensive, day care is very expensive too. It is also understood that you should build up your own retirement fund. Phones and internet access is very expensive compared to most european countries. And just to clarify, it's always weird to say "in Europe". We're talking about close to 30 countries that have big differences between each other. My XP is mostly with western and northern Europe. I ha…
> Quality food is more expensive The United States (as a whole) spends less of a % of income on food than any other country
quality was the keyword here. Yes people spend less on average, but the quality of what they buy is awful. I lived 20 years in various countries of the EU and 10 in the US. Based on my XP it is more expensive in the US to get the same quality that's it. I don't have data or fancy metrics to back it up, it's just my empirical observation :)
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Don't settle for common stock" Unless you're a C-level employee, you're not going to have the choice. And even then you're probably still not going to have a choice except in very rare cases (e.g. Uber's new CEO might have some decent protections). If you're "just" an employee, you're going to get laughed at if you demand anything besides common stock.
That's the point. Being "just" an employee is not a fair deal anymore.
It's not. And the moment employees collectively figure this out, founders won't have a choice anymore. Not if they want employees.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#164My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior-straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country…
It doesn't come out in the wash. It's much easier to max out the 401k when your salary is higher, and with the exception of housing specifically the cost of other things is on par with anywhere else I've lived (in the midwest).
The commute (by train) is in fact less expensive than gas and maintenance on a car in many cases.
If you double your housing cost, even moving from a mortgage to renting because you cannot afford to buy out here, you're still ahead in the valley.
Of course, individual circumstances may alter the above, but generally it's true.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay. Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there really a significant number of engineers at Oracle or Cisco getting that much non-salary compensation?
I haven’t heard about how those two companies pay. It’s definitely a common occurrence at Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, & Salesforce. Bonuses are often structured as a % of your base salary based upon your rank. More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically. This is separate from RSUs, which vary a lot more widely. Their value is especially dependent upon company stock perfo…
Add eBay and Paypal.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater. Your point doesn't necessarily follow from your argument. For example, if salaries where you live were $1,000,000 per year and the cost of living was $10,000, you would gain $600,000 per year in salary and lose up to $90,000 per year in costs, for a net profit of $510,000.
Your first-principles argument is logically correct, but totally ignores the actual costs of living and salary in the given areas. The grandparent point stands just fine.
The first principles argument is consonant with my actual experience in the Midwest and SV. I have vastly more money left over after living expenses in SV.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess that most senior engineers receive more recruiter's emails, including from startups, than they wish, so they don't need to use Triplebyte services.
Senior engineers usually come to us for one of two things: 1) Finding a really early stage startup. We spend time finding the most interesting and fastest growing startups, and given the difference in outcome between the median startup and Airbnb, it's worth spreading the net as wide as possible. 2) Executing a broader job search (including larger companies) faster.
Does Triplebyte do anything other than get past the phone screen these days? Because that value proposition is really low. Saving 30 minutes on a phone screen isn't very valuable. Bypassing the absurd CS trivia interviews would be. If you could somehow convince your clients that a technical interview with Triplebyte is an acceptable proxy for their technical interview, so that on-sites are more about personality fit and synchronization of expectations, that would be valuable.
To me the biggest source of anxiety with these interviews is the hyper-focus on academic trivia that isn't applicable to almost all of engineering work being done there (where "there" is literally any company, including Google). It's one reason I'm looking to move into management and up the technical track: I'm tired of "are you a good code monkey" interviews.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
More true at Amazon. Amazon actually has a salary cap, and everything else is stock. Amazon pays towards a "target total comp" number, which includes vesting RSU's. They do not do bonuses.
Tangentialy I have heard that Amazon has a vesting schedule for stock where everything skews towards the last two years.
Yep. I haven't worked there but got an offer from them and work with a number of ex-amzn people. I forget the exact numbers but it was something like ~20% in total vest over the first two years and then something like 40% a year in years three and four. It's heavily back-loaded and, what a surprise, they have a lot of attrition in the first two years of every cohort. There is a bonus to offset this in the first couple of years, to be fair, but iirc there's a clawback clause on that as well as relo. Everything I've heard and seen about their work culture makes them seem like the 21st century wal-mart.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite though, as you get zero benefits or job security with that- in the UK you’d need to knock off 4 weeks of vacation, a couple of weeks for additional training, maybe a week or 2 for sick leave, and then budget a month or so between contracts. Plus buy your own laptop, fund your own retirement fund/pension etc. Plus it can be harder to get credit if your contract can be terminated at any notice. And your next…
> And your next contract might go down, which is unlike a salary. and you’re exempt from climbing the ladder to a corporate position where the really big bucks are. My impression is that the big bucks are actually in contracting, unless you're near the top of the corporate ladder.
Contracting scales only with the hours you work, so you can’t earn more than a day rate x number of days you work.
You have to leverage capital and/or people to go beyond that.
Re: Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quantity is the problem. I'm sure there are some blindingly talented developers in New Hampshire but there's probably only a few of them and they're more than likely gainfully employed by a company that appreciates their value. Hiring an engineer for 60% of the price doesn't help when you can only fill a third of your headcount.
You're more likely than not going to get an equally untalented developer in Silicon Valley, for the same reason. The talented ones are likely already gainfully employed. I would go out on a limb and say that there are more smooth talkers with silver tongues in Silicon Valley, who will talk their way through an interview and only provide the perception of talent. Still think it's wise to start a company there? It has…
I've actually had the opposite experience: I've found way more silver-tounged developers outside of the Bay. It's hard to bullshit in SV because most worthwhile companies have at least a few people who have been around the block a few times. The smaller the market the easier it is to hype yourself up. I've even noticed it in NYC -- a lot of developers who are able to talk a big game because many of the finance/ad-tech firms are relatively easy to fool.